Cold weather hits Sydney and we respond with such surprise and disdain. I mean, it is the middle of winter, but we are so used to the good weather that we don't really have the right clothes or the right heating. In Melbourne they are rugged up in heavy coats, hats and gloves from mid-May. All black, of course.

The other day we had snow in the northern suburbs! Only it wasn't snow, but soft hail. Countless hours of talkback radio erupted to discuss the differences and the similarities. Kids simply cut out the middle man and made snow(hail)men and slid down white slopes on pieces of cardboard, eager to tell their friends who took holidays in the snow what they had missed at home.

We sometimes forget what we have at home. John Lennon told us that 'life is what happens to you while you're making other plans' and we all know that has a lot of truth to it. So pause you're planning and get stuck into our recipe of the week and exercises of life. After shooting out into the universe our article this week is about things closer to home and equally mysterious. First, however, feast your eyes on a doting Mum. She thinks her kids are just beautiful - no matter how weird!!

Meanwhile chop the pork in to thin strips then into small pieces. Add the pork to the pan and fry for 1 minute. Be careful not to over cook the pork or it will become too tough.

Add the bouillon, sage, sherry and 500ml of boiling water to the pan. Cover the pan and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 30 minutes then serve.

Serves 2

Mind: As you are doing your shopping add up the cost, but in 2 different ways. First time, round up to the next dollar. This isn't too hard, just add the whole dollar amounts in your head. The second time you shop, round the price down to the lower dollar amount. Compare your 'guesstimate' to the actual price at the checkout. Which of the 2 ways of adding up come closest to the actual cost. You might have some interesting realisations about how products are priced. What do you think? Is there some pattern here that tells us something about pricing strategies?

Soul: Share a favourite recipe with a friend. Just send them an email or write it out and mail it or even cook up a sample and share it with them. Let them know that you just want to share the great taste sensation because they are a good friend.

It's All In the Water.

For decades we have been plundering the Murray-Darling river system and suddenly we have realised that something needs to be done. We keep butting up against these 'oops' situations, as if nature's moans are new and surprising. The article in Newsletter 21 about 'the disease of excess' is proving to be worthy of some serious discussion. We really don't seem to know how to cope with our excesses, our greed, our needs, our frustrations.

When I was a kid, Lloyd Bridges used to announce at the beginning of his television show "Sea Hunt" that 3 pips of the world was covered with water. It made so much more sense to me when I finally realised that he was saying 3/5ths! Aah, the miracle of clear communication! But rather than wallow in the miseries of our problems with water, I thought it might be good to look deeper and closer at this thing we are treating like a commodity for human use.

Water is just full of stuff, of life, of mystery. Water is integral to the origin of life and is vital for its continuation. There are things in the water that will amaze and instill wonder in your heart. Maybe if there was a little more wonder and respect and a little less avaricious greed we might live in a healthier world today. I appreciate that we may not have the advancement and developments of our current civilisation, but maybe that is what we have to consider as we touch on the borders of nature's patience and tolerance.

David Gallo shares some amazing film of underwater life at TED. Only about 5 minutes, but full of the amazing adaptions that life makes as it evolves to survive and prosper. It makes me think about how much we have done to prosper, but I worry about how much we have done to ensure survival?

What an amazing capability the simple octopus controls. Very handy against the predatory barracuda. I can see plenty of analogies to our human way of life. What about those people who change colour depending on who they are facing? War would be much less devastating if all we did was bash butts! What can we learn here?

This next video is a bit longer, about 17 minutes and Tierny Thys takes us on a journey of discovery about the Sunfish or Mola Mola. Roving the oceans, eating jellyfish and lazily sunbathing at the surface, this is an amazing fish and an amazing expression of evolution in action. Pretty? Not really, but a marvel nonetheless.

I hope that gets your heart pumping and tickles your funny bone.

These films were, of course, from saltwater. That we have plenty of. Fresh water is our issue. Some places have it fall as rain, some locked in ice and some stored in vast lakes. The deepest freshwater lake in Russia, Lake Baikal, is about to be explored by submarine. We don't even know what is at its bottom.

This lake holds nearly 1/5th (not 1 pip) of the world's fresh water supplies. Wow! What can we do with such a fantastic resource? What is it worth? How easy would it be to access and utilise? These are all the questions that immediately come to mind. What about the question of whether we should do nothing and leave nature alone? I don't know whether that is possible or not, but I wonder if we can start including that question in the ones that immediately come to mind, rather than 5 decades later when mother nature turns nasty.

Share your thoughts and suggestions? richhill@iinet.net.au

(Please register me to receive this newsletter)

Looking forward to sharing more thoughts, suggestions, news and making a very Healthy Wednesday connection with you!

Take Care, Richard, Susie and The Healthy Wednesday Team